News

Can Your Pet Make You Sick?

Thanks to Amber Kingsley, who researched and wrote this article. We hope people will take heed. We have heard too many stories of people who won’t take their children to visit Grandma because her kitty has runny eyes or a runny nose, or worse yet, people who put their dogs or cats down because they seem to have a chronic “cold” although the pet is otherwise healthy, eating well and enjoying life.

We humans often suffer from the common cold or a flu virus. When we get sick, we tend to steer clear of other people so as not to transmit the infection and “spread disease”. Because these illnesses spread quickly among ourselves, we may assume that our pets are also capable of  transmitting their colds and upper respiratory infections to us.

cat w mask

In our great-grandparents’ time, it was rabies that was a huge concern when it came to animals spreading diseases. It was especially problematic with wildlife like rodents, skunks, raccoons and other nuisance animals that could come into contact with us or our pets. Thanks to aggressive rabies immunization requirements for pets, it is very rare indeed for a cat or dog to infect a person with rabies. But what about our pets’ “colds” and “flu”?

The Truth About Cats & Dogs – Colds & The Flu

In a nutshell, if a companion animal has a virus that causes a cough, symptoms of a cold or the flu, the organisms that cause these symptoms are different for pets from what  they are for humans. The bottom line is, “colds” and “flu” aren’t spread from animals to humans, or vice versa. If you’re sniffling and your four-legged friend is sneezing, this is only a coincidence and not a shared condition.

Although it’s possible that you both may need to be seen by a doctor or veterinarian,  the two aren’t linked within a shared virus. Beware, although humans usually have the ability to fight off a cold or the flu on their own, if a dog or cat is showing cold or flu-like symptoms, you should take them to see a vet immediately as these could be a sign of a different, more dangerous disease.

Kennel Cough & Upper Respiratory Infections

Kennel cough got it’s name from how easily this disease is spread from animal-to-animal in close quarters, like conditions found in shelters or kennels. Although highly contagious, especially with canines, kennel cough or Canine Bordetellosis, is not transmittable to humans (note the word canine in the identification of this disease).

sick dog

http://www.pawsomeposts.com/do-dogs-get-colds/

Cats seem to be more susceptible to upper respiratory tract infections compared to canines and this condition is also highly contagious among felines. Just as humans carry bronchitis and viral pneumonia and can pass it from person-to-person, again, these are different types of diseases that aren’t interchangeable between humans and pets.

What You Can Catch

Not to say that you aren’t in some kind of danger from catching something from one of your pets, but as you’ll see, chances and odds are slim, comparable to contracting rabies:

Lyme disease: It is “humanly” possible (but highly unlikely) for an infected tick present on a pet to detach, transfer onto a person and thereby give them the disease from a bite. Thanks to the vigilance of most pet owners who ensure their animals aren’t bothered by fleas and ticks, they’re using medications help to keep these types of nuisances at bay.

Salmonella: Reptile owners (snakes, turtles, lizards, etc.) run a much higher risk of contracting salmonella from these cold-blooded creatures since it’s commonly found in their feces. The majority of these pet owners are aware of this fact and take special care in cleaning their cages or confinement areas.

Toxoplasmosis: This is actually a condition found mostly in the feces of cats and kittens. Almost a third of humans exposed to the virus are immune to the disease, but it can be problematic for pregnant women and their unborn fetus. That is why it’s recommended that women do not clean the litter box while they are expecting.

Remember that you are far more likely to contract something contagious from a friend, family member, coworker or another human that you’re in constant contact with, rather than from a pet. Don’t let the fear of contagion stop you from being a loving pet owner or visiting “Grandma” and her rheumy-eyed cat!

BEWARE! E-cigs Highly Toxic To Pets

Thanks to Chloe Bloom for contributing this guest blog about a very common and deadly hazard for today’s pets:

Electronic cigarettes are a fairly new but major danger for pets. Designed to mimic the feeling of smoking without burning tobacco, e-cigs health benefits vs. risks are debatable. The answer depends on which public health organization you ask. However something that is not being debated is the toxicity of nicotine. When ingested in high enough quantities it can have serious consequences.

skull and crossbones

e-cig cartridgesNone of the ingredients (apart from nicotine) in e liquid are toxic to ingest. They are food grade chemicals and flavorings that are used in things like toothpaste and candy making. This makes e liquid smell and taste very sweet. Because of this sweet taste the e liquid becomes very attractive to animals, who will relish the opportunity to eat such a sweet yet toxic liquid. They have no idea poisonous nicotine is also present. Ingesting even a small portion of a bottle of e liquid has a very high chance of killing an innocent animal.

A tragic recent news story emerged regarding a Staffordshire bull terrier named Ivy from the UK. Ivy managed to get hold of a bottle of e liquid that was left on a dining room table and she started chewing on it, only ingesting a tiny amount.

She then immediately started vomiting and foaming at the mouth. Ivys owner took her to the vets who gave her a large dose of steroids to try and save her. However Ivy unfortunately passed away from nicotine poisoning the next day.

With the amount of people quitting smoking using e-cigs rising every year, the tragic story of Ivy is unfortunately unlikely to be the last we hear of this issue. But there are simple actions any responsible e-cig using pet owner can take to ensure this tragedy does not happen to them and their animal.

Here  is some further advice from the ASPCA which maintains an Animal Poison Control hotline:

It’s crucial that vapers keep their stash out of the reach of pets. That means you should throw away your old cartridges as soon as you’re finished with them. Even if you think they are empty, they could still contain trace amounts of nicotine that would be dangerous if your pet ingested it. … The liquid nicotine is deadly for animals.

The first signs of nicotine poisoning in a pet generally begin within 30 minutes to an hour. Usually, the first symptom is vomiting. Pets might also develop diarrhea, drool uncontrollably, act agitated or have a fast heart rate. If your pet consumes a higher dosage, you will see seizures or extreme lethargy. In some cases, the accident can turn fatal quickly.

Liquid nicotine poses a particular threat because it is quickly absorbed through mucous membranes in the pet’s mouth. If your dog eats a cigarette, the liver has a chance to absorb most of the toxicity. However, liquid nicotine gets absorbed before it ever reaches the stomach causing a more immediate risk and a real emergency.

If your pet accidentally ingests a cartridge or gets into your eliquid, call the vet right away or contact the ASPCA Animal Poison Control hotline at 1-888-426-4435.

How To Earn Money for Charity By Shopping!

igive header

Do you shop online? Doesn’t everybody?
Here’s an easy way to support Pet FBI and help us get more pets back home.

All you need to do is sign up for igive.com before August 31 and shop within 45 days of joining. If you are a new member, Pet FBI will receive $10 or you can chose to share half with any other registered non-profit you choose to support once you make your first purchase.

When you install the igive button on your browser, your purchases will automatically earn a bonus for Pet FBI

When you install the iGive button on your browser, your purchases will automatically earn a bonus for Pet FBI

Just about every major online retailer participates in the iGive program, almost 2000 of them. Each time you make a purchase the retailer donates a percentage to Pet FBI. If you are like the average member you would earn about $50 per year for your charity – all without any expense to you. Please forward this invitation to your friends.

There’s no limit on the number of friends and colleagues you can invite, but there are two vital details:

1. New iGive members only (never joined before) and they must shop within 45 days of joining.
2. They must use your special link for Pets Found By Internet (PET FBI) to get credit

Here’s the link – thanks for helping Pet FBI and lost pets:

http://www.iGive.com/welcome/warmwelcome.cfm?c=10236&m=129567

 

Pet FBI Featured on WOSU / NPR “Tech Tuesday”

Ann FisherThis morning our founder and Executive Director, Maresa Fanelli, was interviewed by Ann Fisher on Central Ohio’s National Public Radio affiliate, WOSU. “All Sides With Ann Fisher” examines topical issues and events in lively and informative interviews with an entertaining style.  Listeners participate via telephone, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter to add to the conversations. As always at WOSU, the coverage is fair and balanced with a civil tone.

Each Tuesday, the second hour of Ann’s broadcast is devoted to technology in today’s world. In her “Tech Tuesday” interview, Fanelli discussed the impact of the Google Ad Grant that Pet FBI was awarded.

Since its inception in 1998, Pet FBI has always depended on word of mouth to attract visitors. Fanelli explained the concept of pay-per-click and how the Google Ad Grant enables Pet FBI to come up at the top of online search results.  As more people post lost and found pet reports to one single central database, the better the chances of a successful reunion.

For people who have lost pets to connect online with those who have found them, there must be a “critical mass”.  Pet FBI  has been active in Ohio since 1998, and is well known. About 40% of Ohioans who submit a lost or found pet report eventually update the status to “reunited”. But it has only been two years since Pet FBI went national and scaled up the database, so the success rate nationally is less than 20%. But it is growing every day, and the Google ads are the major factor in that.

Fanelli also explained how petfbi.org works and how it is unique among the many lost and found pet web sites. For one thing users can do a well-defined, targeted search by timeframe and area. Moreover, Pet FBI keeps records for up to five years, unless the user inactivates it, which is a simple procedure. Perhaps most importantly, since Pet FBI is strictly non-commercial and non-profit, we can link to other sources of information online.

The problem with looking for a lost or found pet report online is that information is scattered everywhere. While Facebook and Craigslist are popular venues for posting lost pet reports, it is not possible to do a targeted search on those sites. Most other lost pet sites are for profit and charge a fee. Still, all-volunteer, not for profit Pet FBI has the largest, best designed and easiest to use of all the public lost pet databases online. Now with the Google Ad Grant we are closer to achieving our goal of getting more lost pets back home by consolidating the most information in a single central database.

Here’s a link to a podcast of our 15 minute opening segment on “All Sides With Ann Fisher – Tech Tuesday:

Compassionate Pet FBI Facebook Friends Rally to Help Pathetic Pooch

dog with huge mass
This poor fella, found in an alleyway in South Columbus with a large mass on his side, needs to visit the vet. His Good Sam is not in a position to absorb this unforeseen financial burden. 

Dog and good Sam

16 year old Good Sam. with Baby after a nice bath. Doesn’t he look grateful?

She posted on Pet FBI Ohio’s Facebook page and our kindly, caring Admin, Char, called for donations. Within 12 hours over $300 was donated by twenty good souls. When the first vet bill came in at $435, an anonymous donor swooped in and paid the balance. Another $210 came in after hours, That will go towards his ongoing care.

Dog at vet

Baby at vet

Baby is younger than he looks, does not have heart worms, and his blood panel came out OK. But they need to keep him a few days so they can do more tests and control his diet. It is dangerous to let  an animal or  a person gorge after a long period of not  eating. He will also need surgery most likely. You can follow our Facebook page for further bulletins. You may need to scroll down to Baby’s picture.

Fortunately, there is someone in the Good Sam’s family who can give Baby a good home, but his vet bills are not over yet. If you can, please make a donation to help Baby.

Donation link

Columbus Bar Crawl Benefits Pet FBI

Columbus Bar Crawl Guys and Pet FBI Director

From left to right:
Bill, Kyle, Maresa and Ryan – the Columbus Bar Crawl Guys and Pet FBI Director

There’s a group of great guys, old school chums from Columbus Ohio, that sponsor a bar crawl each year to benefit a local charity. At this year’s Crawl on April 9 Kyle, Ryan and Bill raised $1,200 for Pet FBI!

A few months back Kyle’s fifteen year old hound dog went missing. As often happens when a pet goes missing, Kyle who is normally a well-focused, organized and rational kind of person went all to pieces.  A neighbor suggested Pet FBI. Kyle sent a post with a picture of Cody to Facebook/PetFBI Ohio. Our ace admin, Char, moved it to the timeline and messaged him with encouragement and advice. Within hours the Good Sam who had found Cody saw the Facebook post and contacted Kyle. He was so relieved he broke down in tears. It was a joyful reunion.

Now Kyle has paid it forward in spades by sponsoring a great bar crawl to benefit Pet FBI. Participating sponsors besides many friends and co-workers were Westies Gastro Pub, Valters at Mannerchor, Jimmy V’s, Hey Hey Bar and Grill, & Planks Bier garten, all in German Village.  THANK YOU, ALL!

Shelter Posting Leads to Unlikely Recovery

cat in arms of dad

Beating the odds, thanks to shelter’s policy of posting to PetFBI.org

Kip, shown here in the arms of his Dad, had been missing for almost two months. A Good Samaritan found him and brought him in to Capital Area Humane Society (CAHS) , an open admission shelter in Columbus, Ohio. Fortunately, CAHS, has some enlightened policies. For one thing, they post stray intakes on the free public database at petfbi.org. The Pet FBI lost and found pet database is the core of this web site and if all shelters took advantage of it, they would increase their recovery rates and lower their euthanasia rates. They would also spare themselves the trouble of escorting distraught pet parents in search of their lost pet through one or more holding areas.

Kip’s Dad had been checking the database and that’s how he discovered – almost two months after this beautiful kitty went missing – that he was at the shelter. Without the posting he would have had to visit the shelter regularly for almost two months. This would have been virtually impossible. For one thing, the shelter is on the other side of town from where he lives.

There is often an interval of many weeks or months before a cat “surfaces” and is brought to a shelter. A cat that is lost is inclined to keep a low profile and elude people until it is really desperate. By that time the cat’s family may have already given up! So Kip really beat the odds – thanks to CAHS’s policy of posting to PetFBI.org and his Dad’s persistence. As an added bonus, Kip was neutered and microchipped, another enlightened protocol at CAHS.

If you are reading this, please encourage your local shelter to take advantage of Pet FBI’s free database. All reports are strictly managed by the poster and can be edited, updated or inactivated at any time.

A Christmas Miracle …or …Annals of Amazing Cats!

25 year old cat recovered

25 Year Old “Mr. Kidders” Recovered Three Miles Away Visiting Old “Girlfriends”!

This 25 year old cat ended up three miles away, apparently attracted by some females he had visited previously!

Here is his Mom’s account of the reunion from her post on our Ohio Facebook page.

“A good Sam named Laura noticed the flyers I put up and called at 230 AM on Wednesday morning (the flyers did say to call anytime) and exhaustively told me that she had Mr. Kidders and would wait until I got off work at 3AM to come get him. When he went missing last year, he wound up at Laura’s but at that time he came back on his own…over 3 miles from home! She told me she has 2 female cats and that could be why he keeps finding his way back to her. Laura would not take any of the $250 reward offered, was just happy I had him back again and happy she could go to bed! Thank you Pet FBI and thank you all of those who prayed, searched and gave me their best wishes! This is my Christmas miracle getting my love back and I pray that everyone missing their pet gets the same blessing I did!  Thank you again!”

Pet FBI Exposes Scams on WSYX ABC 6 “Good Day Columbus”

Pet FBI on WSYX ABC TV

Pet FBI on “Good Day Columbus”!

Our dynamite Facebook Administrator. Char, has been coping with several scams reported by our Facebook posters. We had the opportunity to alert people through a spot on our local ABC station: WSYX ABC 6 . Click this link to watch the video interview about scams affecting lost and found pets.

A problem we are running into more and more often is having multiple people claim the same found pet. Usually it’s a purebred dog of some kind. People either claim the dog to keep or more often to sell. We cannot overstate the importance of demanding some kind of proof of ownership before you relinquish a pet you have found to someone who claims it. You should require vet records, license documentation and a photo. You can also tell if a dog is really being claimed rightfully by the dog’s behavior towards the people claiming it. Producing a Craigslist “Lost Pet” classified does not constitute sufficient proof because the scammers sometimes use the information in the Found Report to post a phony Lost Report after the fact.

The other scam people need to be aware of are the numerous for profit lost and found web sites that promise various contact services for a fee. Some of them are contacting people who post on Pet FBI repeatedly and pressuring them to buy their services. One such site that exhibits logos from the ASPCA, HSUS and the Better Business Bureau although they are in no way endorsed by those organizations. They have a donation link but they are not non-profit. They also claim an unrealistically high success rate.

Before engaging a contact service – and some are legitimate and can be helpful – be sure to read off-site reviews and contact the BBB in their zip where they are located.

Pet FBI “Special Agent” Teresa Aids in Recovery of Lost Dog

Lost Dog and Family

A Reunited Harry with his Human Brothers and Sister

Pet FBI “special agent”, our good pal and frequent hero, Teresa, saw Harry’s lost dog report on our database. (www.petfbi.org)

She contacted Harry’s Mom and encouraged her to post on our Facebook Ohio page as well. Teresa lives in the general area where Harry was lost so she shared his plight on Nextdoor.com. She soon received a couple of Harry sightings!

So what else would Teresa do on a blustery, rainy and cold day off? She went searching for Harry!

By following her intuition regarding where to look she actually came upon Harry! This remarkable woman then pulled over and sat outside of her car crunching on a bag of chips and making minimal eye contact in hopes of luring Harry as our pal Julia has taught us to do. Harry trotted off, however. But at the same moment his Mom happened to drive by looking for him! She encountered a rain-soaked Teresa. Teresa pointed Mom in his direction. Here is the happy result.

YOU TOO CAN BE A BECOME A PET FBI “SPECIAL AGENT”!

Here’s how: First, you do not need to brave the rain and the cold to go looking for lost pets in person. Just go to our page on how to help people recover lost pets read about what anyone can do unofficially.